The present invention relates to a wire connection unit and more particularly to a wire connection unit which accommodates a metallic connector for connecting together ends of two wires including a shielded wire.
In recent years, many coaxial cables (hereinafter, referred to as shielded wires) are used as antenna cables in audio equipment installed on automotive vehicles. For such a shielded wire to be connected with a general wire (non-shielded wire), in many cases, a core wire of the shielded wire and a core wire of the general wire are clamped together by a metallic connector, and a metal piece which extends from a metallic wire device called an earth plate is clamped to a braided wire which surrounds concentrically the core wire of the shielded wire, so that the braided wire is earthed (for example, refer to Patent Document 1).
In the connecting construction described above, normally, a short circuit between the metallic connector and the earth plate is prevented by covering an area which includes the metallic connector which connects the core wires together and a distal end side of the braided wire with an insulative heat-shrinkable tube. The heat-shrinkable tube used here is such as to be shrunk by being applied with heat while allowing an adhesive provided in the tube to melt, so that the tube so shrunk bonds the metallic connector and the like together.
[Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Publication No. 2007-103182 A
As has been described above, according to the connecting construction of Patent Document 1, the connecting area between the shielded wire and the general wire is covered with the heat-shrinkable tube, and this requires a heating step after the ends of the two wires have been clamped together by the metallic connector. Thus, not only is the number of working steps increased, but also the heating facility needs to be controlled.
Since the metallic piece of the earth plate is clamped to the braided wire which is exposed from the shielded wire in a predetermined direction, the directionality of the earth plate with respect to the shielded wire is fixed, leading to a problem that the degree of freedom in arrangement of the earth plate is restricted.